Berat and Vomit

It has been a while since i have written anything here. I try to write something at least once a week, but I haven't found the time lately. Just got back today from a conference in Berat. Berat is in the south-central area of the coutry and is really a good city to visit. They have one of the best preserved castles and "old town" in Albania. Anyway, the conference was for my group of volunteers and it was basically just a follow-up language training for 4 days. It was good to see everyone, some of whom I hadn't seen since June. And we were all able to celebrate Halloween together, which made for some very interesting moments. Some of which included shirtless bumper cars. The less said the better.

One good thing that came out of the conference was that I was elected by my group to be one of three representitives on the Volunteer Adivisory Committee. This is the committee that is the conduit for volunteers to express their problems and concerns to the staff in an official manner. And the VAC works with the PC staff to work for solutions to the problems. We had our first meeting in Berat and it went fairly well. We had a rather delicate issue that we needed to address with the Country Director and I think it was all handled in a professional manner and that hopefully we will see some positive changes soon.

The other thing I really noticed this weekend is how easily Albanians become car sick. It is not uncommon here on the mountain roads for people to get sick, and I never really found that to be too unusual. But coming back from Berat to Durres today, I couldn't believe the number of people that got sick. And the road from Berat is relatively smooth and straight. The only thing I can attribute it too is that most of the people here haven't grown up in a "car" culture like Americans have. From the day that we are driven home from the hospital, a large portion of our lives is spent in the car. And most people here just don't experience that, so I guess their inner ears just aren't as used to movement as American's.